Mobistar holds up its position in a more and more competitive market

1. Key facts

The Mobistar group continues to pursue its four strategic programmes: strengthening its leadership in the mobile activities market, developing services that are available everywhere and at all times, offering the best customer experience on the market and managing  the costs of the company as efficiently as possible.

Strengthening its leadership in the mobile activities market:

• Mobistar opted for a ‘SuperMobile’ strategy because it firmly believes that mobility represents the future of telecom uses. The broad offer of ´Animals´ tariff plans corresponds to these individual and evolving needs of the customers. At the end of March 2013, one year after the launch, 60 % of all residential postpaid customers of Mobistar had chosen an ´Animal´ tariff plan. Building on this success, Mobistar decided in April 2013 to further expand its ‘Animals’ tariff plans to the prepaid cards and to enrich the content of the existing subscriptions. All customers also receive free tariff plan advice via the ´personal check-up´ service. At the end of March 2013, Mobistar had already contacted more than 100,000 customers in order to explain how shifting over to a different tariff plan could best meet their needs.

• Despite increased competition in the mobile telephony market and a reduction in the ARPU, Mobistar is nevertheless maintaining a stable position in terms of mobile number portability (MNP) vis-à-vis the two other mobile network operators (MNO).

• In the first quarter of 2013, mobile phone sales were once again excellent, without really making use of subsidisation actions and thanks to the success of smartphones. Mobistar booked 61.1 million euros on the sale of mobile phones, compared to 41.1 million euros a year earlier, or an increase of 50 % and with a growing share of new smartphone users. As the largest distributor of mobile phones, Mobistar gets a chance to inform those customers about all the Mobistar tariff plans and to accompany them in their use of mobile data services. 

Developing services that are available everywhere and at all times:

• The demand for mobile data continues to rise because the individual telecommunication use of customers is increasingly occurring while they are on the go. The ´Animals´ tariff plans give customers greater control over their consumption and therefore they more often choose a tariff plan that includes mobile data. Amongst the residential postpaid customers of Mobistar who have an ´Animal´ tariff plan, over 80 % have opted for a tariff plan with mobile data. This success and the ‘multi SIM offer’ that allows sharing mobile data, explain the decline of the number of ‘Internet Everywhere’ customers. The share of mobile data in the service revenues rose once again in the first quarter of 2013 to 45.9 %, compared to 41.6 % a year earlier. The share of ‘advanced data’ in the service revenues rose from 12.3 % in the first quarter of 2012 to 15.4 % one year later.  

• Mobistar welcomes the recent evolutions of the regulator with regard to the opening up of the cable infrastructure which should make possible the introduction of competitive offers on this market. Mobistar continues to insist that the fixed-line services market is today still dominated by the cable companies and the historical operator and should be obliged to offer the same access conditions as those of the mobile telephony market.

Offering the best customer experience on the market:

• In January Mobistar was recognised by ´Social Bakers´ as one of the most dedicated Facebook brands in Belgium. Thanks to active monitoring of the social media, Mobistar can respond more quickly to the demands of its customers.
• In the first quarter of 2013, the access to the professional customer zone on the website was also improved, and 67,000 SOHO customers were contacted for a personal check-up.
• Mobistar continues to invest in the services to its customers in order to increase customer satisfaction by resolving efficiently all call reasons. For example the new ´PUK self-care´ was integrated into the menu of the telephone answering machine, as a result of which the number of calls for this problem were reduced by 50 % over a period of six weeks.

Managing the costs of the company as efficiently as possible

• Mobistar continues to draw benefits from its efficiency programme ACE 1 (Agility – Cost – Efficiency), started in 2012. Mobistar is confident in the achievement of its targets for ACE 1 en realized in the first quarter of 2013 some savings by optimising the network and IT operations.

• The efficiency programme ACE 2 aims a structural cost savings thanks to a systematic improvement of all processes of the company. In order to accompany the market evolutions, Mobistar decided to increase the ambition of its efficiency program ACE 2 from 30 to 50 million euro net savings as of 2014.

Results first quarter 2013 Mobistar (.pdf)